Cortelyou Kenney, Fellow

Cortelyou C. Kenney is a Cross-Cutting Legal Projects Fellow.  Before her work at the Center, she was an associate at Wilmer Hale and a law clerk for the Honorable Roger L. Gregory (4th Circuit) and the Honorable Miriam Goldman Cedarbaum (SDNY). She is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley School of Law and Dartmouth College. She is fluent in Spanish. 

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My Take

A Step Forward For Pregnant Workers: Maryland Passes Bill Requiring Reasonable Accommodations

Posted by Cortelyou Kenney, Fellow | Posted on: May 16, 2013 at 03:51 pm

Peggy Young, a pregnant UPS driver in Maryland, brought a doctor’s note to her employer stating that she could not lift more than 20 lbs. Her employer refused to honor the restriction—saying that light duty was only available to other classes of workers such as those injured on the job, those with disabilities recognized under the Americans with Disabilities Act, and those who had lost their commercial driver’s licenses. Peggy Young sued for pregnancy discrimination and lost; the courts held that she wasn’t comparable to those workers who UPS accommodated.

If Ms. Young were seeking her accommodation today, the story might be much different. That’s because earlier today the Maryland governor just signed into law the Reasonable Accommodations for Pregnant Workers Act. Maryland’s law addresses a misreading of the federal Pregnancy Discrimination Act, which requires employers to treat pregnant workers the same as those “similar in their ability or inability to work.” Unfortunately, many courts around the country have held, like in Ms. Young’s case, that, under the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, pregnant workers are not similar to workers in these other categories. As a result, many pregnant women in Maryland and around the country have been denied minor and inexpensive accommodations, forced onto unpaid leave, been fired, or had to continue to do tasks that posed risk to their pregnancies, even while workers with comparable limitations have been accommodated.

Similar to the Pregnant Worker’s Fairness Act, a bill proposed on the federal level the Center has written about many times before, Maryland’s new law takes the comparator issue off the table and simply requires employers to make reasonable accommodations for pregnant-related disabilities as long as such accommodations do not present an undue hardship to the employer.

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Tags: Maryland, Pregnant Workers Fairness Act (PWFA), Pregnancy, Parenting, and the Workplace, Employment | Add new comment

“We Don’t Pay You to Pee” and Other Reasons Why We Need the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act

Posted by
Cortelyou Kenney, Fellow
Liz Watson, Senior Advisor
| Posted on: May 14, 2013 at 02:19 pm

Amanda Roller was a call center employee in Kansas. After Amanda became pregnant she started experiencing morning sickness. Amanda’s supervisor repeatedly refused her requests to go the bathroom and instead told her that she would get Amanda a larger trash can so that she could vomit at her desk. Amanda asked again, and her supervisor again denied her request, saying, “We don’t pay you to pee.” Amanda was then demoted and eventually fired.

Unfortunately, Amanda is not alone. Across the country, pregnant women face discrimination in the workplace when their employers refuse to make adjustments to their job duties such as honoring lifting restrictions, allowing them to stay off high ladders, or even just letting them go to the bathroom to vomit.

The Pregnancy Discrimination Act (PDA) outlawed this type of discrimination in 1978 with its requirement that employers treat pregnant workers the same as those who are “similar in their ability or inability to work.” But too many lower courts have misinterpreted the PDA, holding incorrectly that it permits employers to provide accommodations to workers with disabilities or on-the-job injuries but deny those accommodations to pregnant workers.

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Tags: Employment, Pregnancy Discrimination Act, Pregnant Workers Fairness Act (PWFA), Pregnancy, Parenting, and the Workplace, Employment | 3 comments

Blow to Low Wage Women Workers: Genesis Healthcare Corp v. Symczyk and the Fair Labor Standards Act

Posted by Cortelyou Kenney, Fellow | Posted on: April 18, 2013 at 09:16 am

On Tuesday, in Genesis Healthcare Corp v. Symczyk, the Supreme Court struck a blow to collective actions under the Fair Labors Standards Act (“FLSA”). In a 5-4 decision, the Court held that courts lack jurisdiction to hear collective action cases if the named plaintiff’s (or plaintiffs’) own claims are “moot.” Under the FLSA, collective actions are similar to class actions in that they allow plaintiffs to sue on behalf other unnamed, but similarly situated, individuals, but collective actions do not require many of the stringent limitations imposed on class actions (such as numerosity or typicality of claims). The Supreme Court’s decision means that if the named plaintiff no longer has a “personal stake” in the case and no other individuals have yet joined the case, no relief is available to the group and the case must end, even though the named plaintiff’s complaint sought damages for a group and not solely for herself.

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Tags: Equal Pay Act, Fair Labor Standards Act, Issues Before the Courts, Supreme Court, Supreme Court, Judges & the Courts | Add new comment

Patty Shwartz Confirmed to Third Circuit After Over A Year's Delay

Posted by Cortelyou Kenney, Fellow | Posted on: April 09, 2013 at 01:53 pm

Today, federal magistrate Patty Shwartz was confirmed 64 to 34 by the Senate to the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. Her confirmation is long overdue; she was nominated in October 2011 and was originally voted out of the Senate Judiciary Committee in March 2012.

Judge Shwartz’s nomination typifies how President Obama’s nominees have languished compared to his predecessor’s. According to a recent New York Times article, the average wait time on the Senate floor (after being voted out of committee) for an Obama circuit court appointee has been 148 days, compared with 35 days for President George W. Bush’s circuit court nominees. For Obama’s district court nominees, the average wait has been 102 days, compared with 35 days for Bush’s district court choices.

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Tags: Judicial Nominees, Judicial Nominations, Judges & the Courts | Add new comment

Senate Judiciary Committee Holds Hearing on Jane Kelly

Posted by Cortelyou Kenney, Fellow | Posted on: March 04, 2013 at 10:25 am

On Wednesday, February 27, 2013, the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on President Obama’s nomination of Jane Kelly to the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit.

Her credentials are stellar. A graduate summa cum laude from Duke University, she went on to graduate cum laude from Harvard Law School and clerk on the district court in South Dakota for Judge Donald Porter and on the Eighth Circuit for Judge David Hansen. Jane Kelly currently works as an assistant public defender in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and has briefed and argued numerous appellate cases, including before the Eighth Circuit, and tried 14 cases to verdict in federal district court. In 2004, she received the John Adams Award from the Iowa Association of Criminal Defense Attorneys, given annually to an Iowa attorney who has devoted his or her career to defending the indigent.

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Tags: Judicial Nominees, Judicial Nominations, Judges & the Courts | Add new comment